Our Foes Would Fill Doran’s Mideast Vacuum

Michael Doran might be jumping the gun in claiming that Donald Trump is channeling Ronald Reagan in the Middle East (Letters, March 10). We don’t know yet whether the president agrees with Elbridge Colby and JD Vance that U.S.-Israeli interests don’t overlap enough to justify U.S. military action against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear-weapons program. Mr. Trump may have a red line precisely because others don’t have the will or military means. We should revisit this question a year from now.

In replying to my op-ed “Israel Can’t Substitute for the U.S. in the Middle East” (March 6), Mr. Doran also makes a dubious analogy when discussing the Middle East between the 1950s and 1970s. The Cold War didn’t call for U.S. military intervention in the region—minus President Eisenhower’s decision to let the U.S. Army and Marines sunbathe on Lebanese beaches—because Soviet designs never really threatened the Persian Gulf. In 1946-47, however, President Truman did threaten military action to get Stalin out of Iran. It worked: An outmatched U.S.S.R. departed.

Perhaps Ronald Reagan’s greatest mistake occurred in the Middle East when it was clear that the Islamic Republic was responsible for bombing the U.S. Marines and U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983. Secretary of State George Shultz argued for a reprisal against the Islamic Republic. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger argued against. Reagan went with Weinberger. If he had followed Shultz’s counsel, modern history in that region, especially as it has intersected with Islamic terrorism, would be far less nefarious and destructive.

Mr. Doran’s depiction of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey—and the potential for Turkish-Israeli cooperation—is also odd. It doesn’t match how Mr. Erdoğan and his party see the future, which is more Islamic, anti-Zionist and liberated from Washington’s proctoring.

Like many in the Obama administration, American populists may believe that the U.S. should abstain from foreign fights because it’s too weak, broke or incompetent. Such declinism, made worse by trying to pass the buck to others, won’t, however, make Americans or our allies safer. Mr. Doran’s approach will create a vacuum. Our enemies will fill it.

Mr. Gerecht is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.